CIA Director John Ratcliffe has ordered the withdrawal or major revision of 19 intelligence assessments after an internal review found they did not meet the agency’s standards for analytical rigor and political neutrality, the agency said Friday.
The CIA released unredacted versions of three of the affected reports, all of which had a strong left-wing political bias.
The topics covered included LGBT activists in the Middle East, women and white violent extremism, and access to contraception during the COVID pandemic.
The reports spanned multiple administrations, including one produced under Obama, one during Trump’s first term, and one during Biden’s tenure.
According to the agency, the reports “fall short of the high standards of impartiality that CIA must uphold and do not reflect the expertise for which our analysts are renowned.”
“There is absolutely no room for bias in our work, and when we identify instances where analytic rigor has been compromised, we have a responsibility to correct the record,” Ratcliffe said in a statement.
”These actions underscore our commitment to transparency, accountability, and objective intelligence analysis,” he continued.
The reports were identified during a broader review conducted by Trump’s Intelligence Advisory Board, which examined hundreds of CIA analytic products from the past decade.
An internal review led by Deputy Director Michael Ellis reached the same conclusion, the agency said.
The move follows earlier efforts by Ratcliffe to revisit past intelligence work tainted by political bias within the agency.
Hellbound and Down 